Fish pie

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Everyone loves fish pie – the ultimate comfort food. I shot this last month as part of a job for a large pub chain, commissioned by JWT, so although I can’t give you this exact recipe, I can tell you it was jolly good! Here however is the recipe for my own fish pie so you can create your own comfort moment!

Fish Pie
200g cod fillets/loin
200g salmon fillets
200g raw warm water prawns
1 bayleaf
2 mace blades
1 tsp white peppercorns
150g frozen peas
25g butter
25g plain or gluten free flour
200ml milk
100ml creme fraiche

700g potatoes, peeled and cubed
25g butter
75ml milk
30g grated parmesan
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 200c/400f/gas6.

Boil the potatoes until soft. Drain, and mash until smooth, adding the parmesan and season to taste, cover and leave to one side.

Poach the fish in a large wide pan with the bay leaf, mace blades, peppercorns and enough milk to cover and poach the fish for 5 mins, until the flesh becomes opaque, and flakes easily.

Remove the fish from the pan, preserving the poaching liquid, and when cool enough to handle, remove any skin, and bones and break the fish up into nice sized chunks and put in the bottom of a baking dish.

Melt the butter stir in the flour and whisk in the strained warm milk the fish has poached in adjusting the volume to 200ml with more milk if necessary. Combine until you have a smooth thickened white sauce.

Add the peas to the sauce, stir in the creme fraiche, season to taste. Pour the sauce over the fish, and carefully spooned the mashed potato over it all.

Sprinkle extra grated cheese on top if you like it and then bake in the oven for 25-30 mins, until the top is golden brown and crispy.

Nasi Goreng

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I shot this last month at Denman College - the wonderful Women Institutes' facility near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, where WI members are able to take residential courses in all sorts of wonderful things - including cookery.
It was cooked by their young and exciting chef Peter Lien who teaches many of the courses.

Lighting food with daylight and one diffuser

I have a job coming up which needs some smooth coloured surfaces for ingredients to sit on so I did a test with the nearest ingredient to had in my kitchen at home. The light here is much less soft than in my big white studio in London so always needs some diffusion to avoid ugly shadows and in shooting this test. I didn't have time for a complicated set up. with five minutes to shoot before a conference call I put the camera (Olympus PEN with 45mm 1.8 lens and close up filter) on a tripod, put the two bulbs of pearl garlic on to the background I was testing with the window behind them, and held the diffuser over the garlic, quite close to reduce the direct light. These five shots show the effect of moving the reflector around, higher and lower and back and forward and changing the angle. Such a simple piece of equipment and so many effects achieved in a few moments. If you feel uncertain about how to light food shots it's an excellent exercise to try out - you can learn a lot!

Antique smocks at the WI's Denman College

I was doing a food shoot for the WI last week at Denman College near Abingdon, and was very struck by these smocks, part of a collection they have of classic old English working smocks.
Some of these are originals and some made from the original patterns - all are beautiful. I particularly like the one with red embroidery inside, which was worn by a pall bearer at a funeral at Itchen Abbas in 1898. 

Toast and dripping

This was my breakfast this morning - gluten free toast with beef dripping from last night's roast rib of beef. Totally delicious - and part of my campaign to re-habilitate meat fats.  Read Jennifer McLagan's book 'Fat' and you will never be frightened to eat natural, flavourful, healthy meat fat again!

Shot on Olympus EP-1 with SLR Magic lens.